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28. February 2010

My frustration with Internet Explorer.

Filed under: Microsoft — admin @ 09:29

It is hard to believe that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still has the majority of market share in the web browser world (62.12%). I am just glad to see the rising popularity of Mozilla Firefox (24.43%), Google Chrome (5.22%) to even others such as Apple Safari (4.53%), Opera (2.38%), etc. Whenever I spend time to do various Javascript to even CSS development for various dynamic webpages, I am always held back by the non-compliant Internet Explorer. Today I will be picking IE8 as it is the latest and greatest from Microsoft.

For instance, I was doing some Javascript development earlier in the day yesterday morning and IE8 would fail on the following code:

<script language=“javascript” type=“text/javascript”>
    grabURL=window.location.href.split(”?”);
    if(grabURL[1] == null)
        window.location = ‘error.html’;
    [ ... ]
</script>

Specifically it would fail on the line of code changing the window’s location. I am not looking for any answers or workaround in this blog entry. I am merely venting off some frustration. Why does Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari not see any problems with this perfectly legal piece of code and Internet Explorer errors on it? Also, the error never gives a detailed enough reason as to what it had a problem with exactly.

I come across this kind of thing all the time. The above sample of code is one of many I have had to hack around for IE. It becomes very difficult to take the browser seriously but at the same time it is hard not to since they still own a good chunk of browser share.

7 Comments »

  1. This is a viscious cycle, e.g.

    because IE had a good chunk of browser share, you accommodate with the hacking around,

    also because many accommodates with the hacking around, resulting in IE having the good chunk of browser share

    :D

    Comment by Cae — 28. February 2010 @ 23:45

  2. In the past and only for personal sites I used to redirect all IE browsers to a page stating that the browser was unsupported and that they need to download something more secure, more compliant to internet standards and more stable. I would then offer a list of browsers with associated links.

    Comment by admin — 1. March 2010 @ 07:33

  3. This is the song I.E. is being mean to me again I thought you might enjoy it.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTTzwJsHpU8

    Comment by Matthews — 1. March 2010 @ 21:02

  4. The song describes exactly what I was going through. ;-)

    Comment by admin — 1. March 2010 @ 21:57

  5. Ummm….you have read the spec at
    w3c right? cause if you did you
    would know that you should use
    window.location.href

    http://www.w3.org/TR/Window/#location

    please read the specs, otherwise
    you’re only contributing to the
    hacked html that browser vendors,
    w3c, etc rant against. and i’m sure
    that’s not your aim.

    (ducks to avoid being hit with rocks)

    Comment by webdev — 2. March 2010 @ 00:37

  6. Thank you very much for the suggestion but unfortunately I had added the href portion of the window.location routine. IE still craps out at that exact line.

    Comment by admin — 2. March 2010 @ 07:42

  7. “It is hard to believe that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still has the majority of market share” - why so hard to belive ? I used to work at one of the largest national organization in Poland. One of they security policy requirement every desktop PC must obey is that THE ONLY ALLOWED Web browser is IE.

    Comment by Frompoland — 2. March 2010 @ 14:09

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